Air conditioning (AC) systems for enclosures can include an economizer assembly to allow circulation of fresh, outdoor air into the enclosures. When the air outside of a conditioned space is cool and dry, a device or economizer can be used to bring outside air directly into the interior space to provide supplemental cooling. Because the outside air is both sufficiently cool and sufficiently dry, the amount of enthalpy in the air is already acceptable and no additional conditioning of the air is required. Thus, this provides for “free cooling” as no additional energy costs are required to condition the air brought into the interior space. This free cooling provided by the cool outside air can be used to supplement the main air conditioner cooling. Using an economizer for free cooling will extend the life of the air conditioner and reduce energy consumption by reducing the time that the air conditioner needs to operate.
While current AC systems for larger-sized electrical enclosures use economizers, they require fairly large additional attachments or custom housings to incorporate these economizer assemblies. The increased size of the housing or complicated construction of the additions can greatly increase costs of these AC systems. Smaller AC systems often do not include an economizer assembly to prevent increased costs of requiring such a large and/or complex footprint to air condition a smaller space. Further, AC systems which used economizers typically used the economizers as complementary devices to the main air conditioning device.
Therefore there exists a need for an economizer or ventilator which can be used with both larger and smaller AC systems and that can operate as a complementary device to the main AC system or as an independent, stand-alone device.